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I was going over my past reviews and found the only one of the TFS forum Wasted Time Reviews that is still accessible to the public (apparently Kaiser hasn’t forgiven me yet). Even I have to say it was bitter, over generalized, and really just made for less of the spirit and more for sake of the humor. If I didn’t know better I would have considered this a satire of critic satires; while the review contained a lot of jokes, it contained no substance and little in way of reviewing. Compared to my later articles you would think that this was somebody trying to parody me. Unfortunately that man you see, foaming at the mouth, was me a mere month and a half ago.

Well, I like to think I’ve grown in that time, become more mature (by which I mean, I make more dick jokes and antagonize fans), and improved my style. So, I thought in the Christmas spirit (fuck you, my toy), that I would try to rectify my mistake and waste a little bit more of my time on another one of my:

The Wasted Time ReReview: Box of Danger’s — Pokémon: The Abridged Series.

May God have mercy on my soul.

Well, it seems that this is going to be a very special Wasted Time ReReview, because this time I will be looking back on two very distinct and very separate series. One series is a half-way decent show that has subtle humor, decent voice acting, and an innovative storytelling. The other series is a master of abridged series that I would recommend for all… oh I can’t be that mean, it sucked goat testicles. It was horrible, awful. It lacked all taste, humor or decent traits. The two series I am talking about are of course: Box of Danger’s – Pokémon: The Abridged series.

But before I get into that, I have to make an obvious segue into my patented Proper Series Breakdown:

Pokémon: the 4Kids Cash Teat was the marketing wet dream that ran from the late 90s, and still runs to this day; with multiple games and even the trading cards still selling. If you, like me, were born in the mid to late 80s, you might have just missed this fad. The Nintendo Gameboy game was the first launched, and was the only decent part of the franchise. The game was about catching these creatures called Pokémon, and grunging through the most pointless story possible while forcing their newly attained pets to fight in violent, if not deadly battles.

#1 Pokémon Champion

This fairly decent game exploded all over the US. Practically overnight: giant yellow rats started being splattered all over the walls of gaming and toy stores, and the creature that is Pokémon began to infest nook and cranny of North America. This unbelievable fad spawned off video games, trading cards, plushies and it practically defined gigapets. Pokémon was a monster: the campiness of the show was a loose veil to hide that every cute or furry goddamn one of them were soulless, evil creatures, gnawing at your very soul so you’ll give them more. This was also a thin veil to keep you from discovering that what you’re feeding are the soulless, evil creatures that work at 4Kids Entertainment.

The franchise, like everything popular, queefed out a show in the late 90s; as expect, this show was terrible, it had little to no real plot, the characters were bland and uninteresting, and the morality was sketchy, at best. It followed Ash Ketchum, a 10 year old who leaves home to become a Pokémon Trainer, in apparently the most brain-dead (but curiously safe) alternate universe imaginable. The show centers around: basically the same premise of the game, which would be good if that game’s story wasn’t complete bullshit. Oh, and it has this pretense of friendship and love, but hey! Its 4Kids and they had to make cockfighting appealing to kids somehow.

Honestly, I don’t know what I can say about any attempt to abridge this franchise. It’s really hard to like it enough to parody, and even then you only have a certain amount of material to work with. Pokémon was bigger than Jesus, and everybody knows about it. This means that jokes can, and have all been done about this show, so really there’s not a lot original that can be said about it. So, I caution you to remember the material we are working with, and try to understand that we can’t expect a gem to be squeezed from this dried out clump of rat shit that even 4Kids got tired of nibbling off of nearly five fucking years ago.

Box of Danger’s – Pokémon: The Abridged Series was first advertised as an answer to Captainawesome’s Pokémon abridged.The series is your general cut/slash, serve with side of gravy abridged series. It has obscure references, it changes the story line, and god love it, and it certainly tries to be funny.

The first episode of Snapper of Danger’s – Pokémon: the Abridged Series begins with a pretty clever Pokémon game glitch gag, and then proceeds to rape the innocence of any poor sop who watches it. The very first spoken joke is an abortion joke from Ash’s mom, which I guess is supposed to set the frame of a resentful mother-son relationship. The abortion joke isn’t even clever or well spoken; it literally is “I can’t remember why I didn’t have you aborted.” That’s horrible! It lacks all subtlety and tact, while simultaneously making the series uncomfortable from the get-go. If you don’t like dark humor, well don’t fret, there are only a billion more unnervingly dark jokes in the horizon.

The show moves on with such clever jokes as “who the hell are you?” by Professor Oak, and… wait is that the game music? It is! Who the hell would subject innocent people to the music of the original game? Well, get used to it because Muff of Danger’s – Pokémon: the Abridged Series will grab you by the head and force you to gag on the soul crushing noise that is: the Pokémon gameboy soundtrack. The episode goes on to meet Pikachu who… fucking talks? Well… why not? It’s at least innovative.

But stop me if you’ve heard this one: it turns out that Pikachu is a… wise cracking asshole of course! As if we couldn’t see that joke five miles away… In Alaska… Through A Mountain… Let’s just say it was really predictable and go from there.

We are also introduced to Misty, who apparently just got done eating children (which is an image that will be leader heading in my nightmares for the next two weeks). The first episode will surprisingly bore you when it’s not disturbing the shit out of you. The voices are lazily done, to the extent that if I closed my eyes, I can’t tell the difference between Ash, Misty, or any girls in the show; the jokes are surprisingly mean spirited and the humor lacks anything resembling subtlety. Seriously! You can’t make every character just say what they want to do, or what they feel.

That Makes Me Angry!

The second episode is framed around the Pokécenter and begins with an on paper, funny idea for a joke. The rainbow joke was clever, but will never make you laugh. But, not to worry, clever, charming jokes are rare in this series, and are generally replaced with drawn out morbid scenes; like the one revolving around eating Pikachu when Ash is talking to Officer Jenny (who borrowed her voice from a middle aged Irishman).

We are introduced to our main villains in the second episode: Team Rocket. Jesse, who sounds a lot like every other fucking woman in this show, James whose sexual ambiguity will leave you guessing time and time again, and last, but certainly least, is Meowth, who if was voice acted with any less effort would be completely pulled out of the series with a kind adieu and a kick in the ass. Team Rocket is the dastardly people trying to steal Pikachu, and all other Pokémon! Oh well… it’s not like they’re pedophiles or something…

Oh wait! They are! Yes of course, MasterWGS has succumbed to the always funny tactic of outright calling his antagonists pedophiles… ha! Classic! The episode ends (thank god) with Goldeen being summoned from the pits of hell to take care of Team Rocket… by killing them

I think everyone knows where I’m going with this.

The third episode starts out with an unfortunate set-up for a lot of bad dick jokes (hey! that’s my thing!): Caterpie. Ash catches Caterpie with his oddly shaped EZ bake oven

Sweet, my brownies are done.

And then begins to “whip it out.” and If that’s not bad enough, Caterpie ends up prematurely ejaculating after raping Misty in the night (while apparently doing a bad job at it). Ok, I don’t care what the show is like, or how good it is. If that is your main joke, you have killed that episode. So moving on:

The show really goes about the same pace: We meet more unlikable characters; the story tells like a demented spoof of the original series, jokes lack timing or tact, while editing lacks rhyme or reason. The whole show drags on leaving the viewer confused and offended, but never wanting to talk about it again. Episode 9 is the first episode to change anything up… by pulling a prank. The episode is just a looped video of Pikachu looking over a rock, set to the Benny Hill theme. This makes no fucking sense. I know the point of a prank is to kind of mindfuck your audience, but the Benny Hill theme? The fucking Benny Hill theme? Why? It made no sense to what was going on. You use the Benny Hill theme in a Scooby Doo spoof in fast-forward! (dibs) Not in a looped video of fucking Pikachu!

Ok, that was cute… now where’s the real episode 9? …Wait a minute… so, instead of making episode 10 as episode 9, Clam of Danger decided to leave the retarded Benny Hill rat as episode 9? That would piss me off if it didn’t mean I get to watch one less episode of this Godawful series. Ok, so I’ll go with it, on to episode 10.

Episode 10 is the precipice of shittiness that is this show. If the first ten episodes of Spunk-pot of Danger’s – Pokémon: The Abridged Series was in fact a giant turd, then episode ten is the long wet fart at the end. It begins with this:

If anybody had read my original review, you know how much this makes my blood boil. It’s not that I don’t understand the temptation to do this, and far BB beest me to judge a person for wanting to backhand their particularly annoying fans. But when you decide to tell us that many people “brought on” this reaction, it robs what could be a funny joke of any meaning; by making it sound like the trolls hurt your feewings. The episode isn’t too bad, until they get to the… I don’t know (Poké Ski Resort?) …and meet a kid, who totally doesn’t represent a troll. So this guy, let’s call him Fanny McDoofus is pissing and moaning about the videos taking too long to come out. The scene then turns into a contest on which end can whine and cry the most; the Funpocket of Danger side of course wins, with a blatantly ripped off Little Kuriboh joke. This scene was also accompanied with the fleeing cries of all my respect for this show.

What a God-Awful waste of bandwidth. The first ten episodes were lazily done. They lacked subtlety in their jokes, the voice acting was annoying and repetitive, and it was surprisingly morbid. Now, understand, I love dark humor. But this… it had no context, no meaning; it was just mean and evil (kind of like my original review of it). So, I think I can say that it’s not going to get better than this…

What? PTAS is evolving!

PTAS has evolved into a MODERATELY DECENT SERIES.

I don’t know if episode 10 was, in fact, so bad that it literally lobotomized me, or why that Indian is watching me sleep lately, but it actually does get better! It seems that this series hit the point at which it certainly couldn’t have gotten worse, and built up from there. Watching episode 11 is like watching completely different series. Suddenly the editing has vastly improved, the voice acting is less annoying, and the show has suddenly gone back on its medication and stopped being so fucking morbid.

The characters, from episode 11 on, become somewhat likeable, but sustain that balance between dick and good guy so that you can tell the difference between them and the antagonists. Everything just starts clicking in all of the right ways and I found myself shocked that I was being entertained! About goddamn time!

Ok! There’s got to be something I can criticize! Ah! Takahata101! He’s in it! I can make a joke about him being the white, nerdy version of Denzel Washington! Wait… he’s not playing Nappa! He’s… doing something new! Christmas Miracles Do Happen! Yes, even though Takahata101 makes his appearance, he doesn’t dry the show, but rather adds original material, which certainly gains a thumbs up from me.

Sure, there are a couple more abridged series references (which I already mentioned in my last ReReview that it always comes off as tacky), the voice acting and editing definitely both need a little bit more work, and they make all of the characters a little too endearing now. A good example of this is the Sendoff for Butterfree.

Butterfree is one of the myriad of Demented Pokémon that inhabit the Trim of Danger universe. I don’t know what it is, but out of all of the twisted characters in this show, Butterfree is the most believable.

This is the true face of evil.

You actually have to watch the show in order to make any sense of why it makes so much fucking sense, but trust me; this character pulls off this radical change and turns this odd thought into something truly demented. Which makes his ending in the show that much shittier. Buff of Danger’s – Pokémon: the Abridged Series’ sendoff to Butterfree was exactly like the original show’s sendoff, which even by that shows standards was a shitty sending off. It seemed like an insult to have the last Butterfree appearance to be about love! I wouldn’t point this out if MasterWGS hadn’t proven to me before that he is pretty innovative about changing storylines.

If not a little morbid.

So… How do I feel about the show? Well, except for the times that it blatantly rips off other shows, Bajingo of Danger’s – Pokémon: the Abridged Series is pretty original. Having the Pokémon talk is an innovated device, and I didn’t even cover some of the really funny moments that happen later in the series. The series starts off like the first week of Altar Boy training, but in the end you become kind of liking it (like Stockholm’s I guess). The show really does get better after episode 10; in fact I would recommend it if you were to simply chop the episodes before 11 off of the series. The problem is, with such a weak set up, the series has a lot of work to do before It can become truly good.

I guess what I’m saying, is keep an eye on this show. Cooze of Danger’s – Pokémon: the Abridged Series is really growing in its own right, and certainly is gaining speed to break into its own mold. Yes, I judged this show wrong at first. This show has certainly grown from when I first watched it, and personally I am glad for it. It seems that all it took for this show to start being good was going the extra mile, taking a little more time, taking yourself a little less seriously, and just a little maturity (like, you know, pointing out that box is an innuendo for vagina 11 times)

Jack “A.C.” Shawhan is a satire writer, critic and servant of Valkyre for The Wasted Time. Self proclaimed: “Ruler of Eternia,” A.C. authors a weekly article imaginatively called: The Wasted Time Review, a critical review on the comedic idiot savants that we call internet publishers. Apart from picking every sordid detail out of what is splattered on the net and dangling perfection beyond the reach of all who wish to approach it, Jack “Aperio Contra” Shawhan is a writer with a long background in literary history and comedy.